The Doctor Does Domestic
by solar.penguin1
Summary: The Ninth Doctor, the Doctor who "doesn't do domestic," finds himself stuck on Earth and having to investigate small scale domestic crimes, including a shooting and a kidnapping. (The plot is very loosely based on the old-time radio serial "Paul Temple and the Lawrence Affair".)
1. The Boat and the Bullets

**The Doctor Does Domestic**

 **Preface**

"Preface" sounds a lot classier than "Author's Notes," doesn't it? Anyway, you're probably puzzled why I'm writing a Ninth Doctor story when we're all supposed to be wondering and/or dreading what Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor is going to be like.

Well, this is a story I've had in the back of my mind for many many years, in one form or another. I'm a big fan of Old Time Radio dramas, and have often wondered whether those old stories with their slow, melodramatic plots and ever-so-posh characters could be updated to work in the modern day. What sort of hero would be needed to bring the stiff-upper-lip sense of fair play but without any poshness? It _had_ to be the Doctor.

This combined with another idea that I had been wondering about. What would happen if the Ninth Doctor, the Doctor who "doesn't do domestic," had to solve a small-scale problem? No alien invasions, mad scientists or the end of the universe. Would he hate it, or would he throw himself into it with all his usual energy?

But I hate the process of writing, so the idea has just been sitting around in my head going nowhere until now. Even though I don't like writing, I like having written stuff, and the idea just won't keep still in my brain. So here it is. Maybe I'll even manage to finish it this time.

"Doctor Who" is – of course – the property of the BBC. The story is very loosely based on an old BBC radio serial called "Paul Temple and the Lawrence Affair" written by Francis Durbridge. I don't own either of them.

I don't have a beta reader yet, so feel free to point out any mistakes that need fixing. But don't waste your time complaining about the weird premise of this story. That's pretty much fixed in stone, and it's too late to change it.

* * *

 **Chapter one**

 **The boat and the bullets**

The strange man wasn't there today. Rose had seen him sitting on the bench by the cliffs the past three days, staring creepily at her as she cycled past. But today, she noticed that the bench was empty save for a few fallen autumn leaves.

Good, she thought then tried to put him out of her mind as she cycled down the slope into Fulworth Gap. It was strange how someone like him could frighten Rose, who had fought alien menaces and even lived through the end of the world, even though he was just a human. No, she corrected herself, _because_ he was human. That made a difference somehow.

Still trying hard to convince herself she was trying hard not to think about him, Rose entered the village of Fulworth itself, and cycled along the front where she could see the local fishermen waiting for the tide. Finally, she pulled up outside the Novelty Rock Emporium, chained her bike to the lamppost and went in.

Marnie Roberts was there behind the counter as usual. She looked up from her mobile and gave a cheery, "Hi Rose. How are you?"

Rose replied with a "Hi," of her own then added "Fine thanks."

"And how's the Doctor?" asked Marnie, a small black woman in her mid-thirties. "Still busy with his work?"

"Yeah. Once he gets started on something, there's no stopping him." Rose turned the wall behind her. Despite its name, the shop didn't just sell sticks of rock, but other sweets as well. There was even a small section at the back with general groceries, but it was the sweets that she was interested in now. She picked up a packet. "In fact, he asked me to get these for him. And how are you? Keeping busy?"

"It's quiet enough now, but we'll pick up when school closes," said Marnie. "It'll be chaos then."

"I bet." Rose grinned, remembering what she had been like as a kid.

"But, yeah," continued Marnie, "the only time we're busy in the mornings is in the summer Bank Holidays. The rest of the time, this is a chance to relax and catch up."

As if to prove her wrong, the bell above the shop door dingled and a man came in. The man. Rose felt herself take a half step backwards away from him.

Get a grip, she told herself and forced herself to look at him. He was just an ordinary man, in his fifties she guessed, a little bit overweight, black-rimmed glasses standing out against the grey hair on his temples. Nothing odd at all, except for the way he was staring at her.

"Do you sell cigarettes?" The question was aimed at Marnie, but addressed to Rose.

"Sorry," said Marnie. "Try the newsagents or the supermarket on Church Street."

"OK, thanks." Then, suddenly, he turned and left.

"What was up with him?" asked Rose, finding she could speak again.

"Dunno, but he won't forget you in a hurry."

"Yeah. Now where was we?"

"That Doctor of yours."

"Yeah." Rose smiled. "I was thinking of getting him out of the cottage for a bit. It said online that one of fishermen, a guy called Potts, takes people on boat trips along the coast. He's the old one with the limp, isn't he?"

"'Lobster' Potts?" said Marnie. "Yeah, that's him. But don't bother. He's hardly ever sober. I'll give my Gary a call and see if he can take you."

"Thanks," said Rose, and while Marnie called her husband, Rose gathered up the rest of the shopping they needed.

* * *

The Doctor hadn't even moved when Rose returned to Beekeeper's Cottage. At least, he was still sitting in the same spot on the living room carpet, the open doors of the police box behind him. He was even still probing the what looked the same TARDIS component with his sonic screwdriver. On a second glance, though, Rose wondered if maybe the piles of other components scattered all around him had grown a little while she was out.

"Back already?" he asked, putting down the strange circuit and leaping to his feet.

Rose sighed as she removed her backpack. "No, I'm still in town. What do you think!"

"Oh, very funny." A tiny pause then a grin started to spread across his face. "Did you get them?"

"Yeah." She reached into the backpack and felt what she she was after. "Here you go." She pulled out a packet of Jelly Babies and threw them to him.

"Fantastic!" The Doctor's grin now seemed to be taking over his face, spreading from one large ear to the other. "I haven't had these in centuries. Not since I had curly hair and a scarf! Can't wait to try them again. How do you stupid apes manage to make such great sweets?" He glanced down at the plastic packet and paused. "Why don't they come in a paper bag anymore?"

Rose wasn't paying much attention to him. Staring out of the cottage window, she tried to see round the curve in the lane to the bench, wondering if that man was back there now. It was only when the now-open packet of Jelly Babies was thrust under her nose that she was snapped back to her surroundings.

"I said, do you want one?" The Doctor waved the packet in front of her.

"Oh, uh, thanks." She absent-mindedly took a sweet, and looked at it without even noticing the colour.

"You were right," said the Doctor. "You aren't really here, are you?"

"What?" Rose popped the Jelly Baby in her mouth as confidently as she could. Was it orange?

"Look, I'll never be able to speak human body language like a native," said the Doctor, "but even I can tell something's wrong. What is it?"

"It's nothing, really."

"Nothing?" The Doctor cleared something that looked like a cross between a computer circuit board and a clockwork toy from the armchair and gestured for Rose to sit down. "Then it won't hurt if you tell me about it."

"All right." Rose knew when she was defeated. She sat down and told the Doctor everything. She felt embarrassed at first, knowing how silly she was to be worrying about something like this. She half expected the Doctor to dismiss her worries as "domestic," but he took it all very seriously. Squatting down in front of the chair, looking straight at her, he listened to every word, and even asked her to repeat the description of the man.

When she was done, he stood up again. "Look, if things are worrying you, then, there's a simple, practical solution."

"What do you mean?"

"You needn't stay here." He rubbed the back of his neck, then flung his arm out towards the door. "Even if it is nothing, I can fix the TARDIS here, and you could visit Ricky and that mother of yours up in London until..."

"No!" Rose startled herself with how strongly that came out. "Sorry, it's just, well, just too soon. Y'know?" She lifted her head and stared straight into his eyes. "When we went back and saw what happened to my dad, well, the TARDIS wasn't the only thing that got broken then."

"Oh." For once the Doctor was lost for words. "I… I didn't know. Am I supposed to hug you now or something?"

"No. But you can make me a cup of tea. And anyway," Rose leapt to her feet and tried to sound more cheerful. "I can't go up to London just now. I've got a little treat for you tomorrow."

* * *

The Doctor followed Rose along the quay, as slowly as he could. A boat trip along the coast wasn't his sort of thing. It was too touristy, too bland, too domestic. Why had he agreed to this?

His companion turned back and said, "Come on. At least we've got good weather for it."

Yes, that was why. "Fantastic," he replied with more enthusiasm than he could truly muster, and he quickened his pace. If something as simple, as domestic as this helped Rose to feel like her old self again, then it was worth it.

And yet there was something she had said, something in the description of her creepy man, that rang a faint bell in the back of his mind. As he rejoined Rose, he tried to recall it, but whatever it had been it was now lost behind a couple of awkward regenerations and a Time War.

The Doctor glanced over at the bald man sleeping in the boat beside them. "Don't tell me he's the one taking us."

"He nearly was." Rose pointed ahead to the next boat. "But we're going with Gary Roberts there."

Gary Roberts was in his mid-thirties, of average height, and his lean but muscular body gave him and average physique too. Typical unremarkable ape, thought the Doctor to himself. Only the shock of thick red hair above his tanned skin made Roberts stand out from the crowd.

"Hello, I'm the Doctor. Pleased to meet you." He bounded forward, grabbed Gary's hand and started shaking it in what he hoped was an enthusiastic manner,

"Uh, hello." Gary removed his hand. "Great to see you at last. Marnie's told me so much about you."

The Doctor glanced at Rose. "Marnie?" he mouthed.

"His wife. I've made friends with her," she whispered back. "I told you about her, remember."

"OK." He did remember hearing something about her, but had never really paid much attention when Rose talked about boring human stuff.

Rose turned towards Gary. "Sorry. You know how absent minded scientists can be."

"Yeah, I understand. As long as he doesn't forget why he's here," Gary turned towards the iron ladder leading down to a small fishing boat. "Let's go."

They climbed down and once Gary had given them both life jackets, he cast off and headed out to sea.

Despite himself, the Doctor soon found himself enjoying the trip. It wasn't as exciting as the Mary Celeste or the Titanic, of course, but in its own way it made a change from working on the TARDIS's spatial chronometers again.

He glanced over at Rose, who was looking at the cliffs. "Where's Beekeeper's Cottage?" she asked.

"Over there," said Gary. "You can just make out the roof from here."

"Oh yeah." Rose grabbed the Doctor's arm. "Look."

"It's good to know the cottage is occupied again," continued Garry. "It's been empty since before I was a kid."

"Yes, the old man who used to live there left it to m… to my family when he died," said the Doctor, "but we've never needed it before now."

"The old bee-keeper? My dad used to say he was an interesting man, but a bit odd."

"Like me, you mean."

"I didn't say that. Sorry, he wasn't related to you, was he?"

"No, just a friend. Of the family. Never met him myself. How could I? Look at me. I'm far too young. So what else did your dad tell you about him?"

"It seems he always used to say things like, 'In bee-keeping as in everything else in my life, the key to success is founded on the observation of trifles. People see but they don't observe.'"

"Yes, he was right there. Humans are stupid apes, never noticing what's right in front of them!" The Doctor was suddenly cut short by a hard stamp on his foot.

"Sorry," said Rose. "The boat must of jolted." She turned back to Gary. "Talking of seeing what's right in front of you, what's that really big cliff there."

"That's Easthead Point. It's a site of special scientific interest."

The Doctor looked excitedly at the approaching cliff. "What's there? Some spatio-temporal anomaly?"

"No. It's the nesting site of the dabfowl."

"Ah, nesting. Yes."

"Well, there's someone up on it now," said Rose. She waved, then paused. "Is he carrying a g..."

"Get down!" yelled the Doctor, who had seen it too. He pulled her down to the deck as a shot rang out. He heard the bullet fly overhead, then another shot, another bullet and a cry of pain. Gary Roberts, who had remained standing at the helm, now fell. Blood trickled out from where he lay.

* * *

 **Additional Author's Note:** Fulworth is taken from "The Adventure of the Lion's Mane" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The old bee-keeper is Sherlock Holmes himself, and the Doctor met him in the novel, "All-Consuming Fire." But for those of you who like to think only TV is canon, I'm keeping things vague so you're free to imagine it was actually Madam Vastra in a _very_ heavy disguise if you like!


	2. A Death and a Decision

**Chapter two**

 **A death and a decision**

* * *

Looking back on the events of that afternoon, Rose could remember Gary being shot as clearly as if she were back there again, watching it all happen once more. The events afterwards, however, were all confused and jumbled, a blur of vague impressions.

She had tried to use the basic first aid from that course she had been sent on at Henriks, tried to tie a simple tourniquet around Gary's bleeding arm and bandage the wound. Was that before or after she had called the ambulance from her mobile? At least she knew what the Doctor had been doing. He had seized the helm and turned the boat round back towards Fulworth in a wide curve to keep away from the cliffs.

The ambulance had been waiting for them at the quay, and the paramedics had seemed relieved. Gary's injury looked like it was just a flesh wound, even if it was a nasty one.

And now Rose and the Doctor were in a small grey room in the Eastgate Cottage Hospital ("A Centre of Excellence" according to the signs plastered everywhere) with Inspector Vesper of the East Sussex Police. Whatever he had seen on the Doctor's psychic paper had certainly impressed him. (Rose was more impressed that the Doctor brought the psychic paper on a simple boat trip in the first place! "Talk about being crazy prepared," she thought.)

"Just one more thing sir," said the lean, fair haired Inspector. "Do you or Ms Tyler have any enemies that you know of? Anyone who might do something like that to you?"

"Well," said Rose, "there's one guy." She described the creepy man who had followed her into Marnie's shop.

"Thank you," said Vesper "We'll keep an eye out for him, don't you worry. And you Doctor? Can you think of anyone?"

"No," said the Doctor, with a perfectly straight face. "No-one."

Once the Inspector had left, Rose finally let out the giggle she'd been holding back. "How did you manage that? No enemies!"

"None that would do anything like that," said the Doctor, grinning. "Shoot me with an ultrasonic death-ray, yes, or a Dalek disintegrator gun. But not a plain old rifle or shotgun. My enemies have more style."

"You can judge a Time Lord by the quality of his enemies, can you?"

"Of course." The Doctor jumped to his feet and struck a mock noble pose, one hand raised to his brow, the other on his breast. "See?"

"Yeah, very good." Rose was glad of the distraction, and got up to curtsey to him. A nurse entered while she was in the middle of it.

"Uh, not interrupting anything am I?"

Rose and the Doctor both said "No."

"Right. I just thought you'd like to know, Mr Roberts doesn't have any broken bones. He'll have to stay overnight for observation, but we'll probably be letting him go in the morning." 

* * *

Gary was indeed released the next morning, with just some stitches on his upper arm. Although the doctors had advised him to take things easy, the following day he was back fishing in his boat again.

Once the police had finished searching Easthead Point and found nothing, the Doctor and Rose made their own search and also found nothing. The Doctor even tried sweeping the area with his sonic screwdriver for traces of advanced technology, but the sound just disturbed the nesting birds and he was forced to give up before his jacket got ruined, and return to attempting to fix the TARDIS.

And so the days passed. At least there was no sign of the creepy man any more. Rose should have been relieved, but the fact that he had disappeared after the shooting didn't give her any comfort. 

* * *

"Where are the Zeus plugs?"

"The what?" asked Rose.

"The Zeus plugs." The Doctor didn't even look up. He remained sitting cross-legged in the centre of the room, giving all his attention to what looked like a blob of pale-blue slime with silicon chips sticking out of it.

Rose glanced down at the alien components scattered around the living room, hoping to see a box or packet with a helpful little label saying "Zeus plugs." Of course there wasn't anything like that.

"What do they look like?" she asked.

The Doctor sighed. "Like plugs that fit into Hera sockets, of course. You know, sort of -" A loud knock at the front door interrupted him before he could explain. "I'll get that!" he said, jumping to his feet and dropping the pale-blue blob to the floor. "You keep looking for those plugs."

Rose watched him dash into the hallway. He must be going stir-crazy, she reflected, to want to talk to a 'stupid ape' like that. The sooner the TARDIS was fixed the better.

"Doctor Smith." It was Inspector Vespar's voice. The Doctor hadn't closed the living room door properly. It was still open a crack, and voices could drift through from the hall.

"What is it, Inspector?"

"Nothing really, just a courtesy call. Er, how well did you know Gary Roberts?"

"Not well. I've only met him once. Although that was an interesting time." She could hear the smile spreading across the Doctor's face. "Wouldn't've missed it for anything. Rose knows him better. Why?"

"Well, she might be interested to know, something happened this morning."

Something was happening right now. The pale-blue slime had grown thin, metal, spider-like legs and was crawling towards the partly open door. Rose quickly grabbed it before it made its way into the hall, then returned her attention to what the Inspector was saying.

"Roberts and a man called 'Lobster' Potts were walking along the cliff when they came across a hiker whose dog had fallen onto a ledge a couple of yards down. Roberts offered to climb down and get it for her, but it looks as though his injured arm wasn't strong enough. He lost his grip and fell. To his death."

When she heard that, Rose almost lost _her_ grip on the slime thing and it started wriggling in an attempt to break free.

"Dead?" asked the Doctor. "Are you sure it was an accident?"

Rose quickly shoved the blob into a large urn that was part of the cottage's original decoration, then edged closer to the door.

"Well, I had my doubts, after what happened to you a couple of weeks ago, but we've got the statements of Potts and the woman. There'll be an inquest of course, but there's no sign of foul play. It was just one of those things."

Rose slumped down, her back to the wall. "Not again," she muttered under her breath. "Not again."

Images of her dying father flashed before her eyes. Even though she had tried to save him, Pete Tyler had sacrificed himself, an innocent man giving up his life to save others, to save her, the way Gary had done to save that dog. The TARDIS had been injured in that incident, and even though it seemed all right when they left, it only managed to take them a short way before breaking down again.

Ironically they were now stuck in Rose's own time. But she hadn't been back home. Knowing she was now responsible for her dad's death meant she didn't want to face her mother. Instead she stayed here with the Doctor, hiding, trying to pretend it never happened. And now this, almost as if the universe was conspiring to remind her. But that was silly. It couldn't do that, could it?

"Did you hear?" The Doctor was standing over her.

"Yes." She forced the word out, then took a deep breath. Rising to he feet, she said, "Doctor, I've changed my mind. I can't keep hiding here. I've got to see my home."

He placed a friendly hand on her arm. "Are you sure you aren't just hiding from this."

"No. I mean, I've got to come back here for the TARDIS anyway. Even if I wanted to hide, I couldn't do it forever."

"Fantastic!" His grin reappeared. "I'll come with you. I could do with a change of scene."

"OK, but on one condition. I phone mum to warn her first. The last thing she needs is you turning up on her doorstep without warning."


End file.
